The majority was from Accel, a US VC, and the
rest was from individuals somehow connected to, or believing in,
Instabug.

How did that happen?

Those of you who know me know that I believe in
both startup businesses and something we call the ecosystem: the
environment that can help startups with funding, technical and
business knowledge, talent acquisition, exposure to media and
customers, and a host of other things, that can increase a
startup’s chance of making it past all the hurdles, blocks,
challenges of growing a successful business.

Those of you who know me really well know that I
think that people born into privilege don’t need an ecosystem, or,
more correctly, they are often born into a ready-made ecosystem
that gets them funded, into the best universities, access to
incredible networks, and so on.

The ecosystem exists

In Cairo we have an ecosystem.

(Rise Up Summit 2013, right, image via
Wamda)

It’s relatively new, it’s often been messy and
inefficient, but it exists, and it works, and it's now connected to
the region and the globe. It’s not Silicon Valley, or Berlin, or
London. It doesn’t yet have the same level of resources (and
definitely not locally) but it works.

The best illustration of the Cairo/MENA
ecosystem working is news like Instabug getting an investment of
$1.7 million to grow their business and take it to the next
level.

An idea and a vision

I’m going to go back in time and show how two
talented young guys with an idea and a vision used the ecosystem to
maximize their chances of seeing their vision realized.

Where I pick up the story is when I saw them for
the first time in Flat6labs Cairo, in 2012.

Flat6labs was itself just starting so these two
young guys, at the time calling their business A*Apps (with a grand
plan of creating multiples of apps for developers) pitched their
bug-reporting app idea. Moataz Soliman was the CEO at the time –
more on that in a bit.

I was in the audience thinking ‘wow!’, this is
cool and this kid has a lot of confidence. I’d had to do a ton of
app bug reporting in my old company so I knew they were going to
solve a problem I was familiar with.

Flat6labs gave them some small seed money to
build their prototype, and gave them access to people like me and
great mentors like Amr Shady from TA Telecom. Over the course of
the next few months they refined their idea, built their prototype,
honed some of their skills, built a compelling case for investors,
hired their first team, and started to get some
attention.

Flat6labs was their induction into the nascent
ecosystem. At Demo Day that summer they gave an extremely good
account of themselves, their product, the opportunity, and their
willingness to take on the US market.

Making opportunities work

The next part in the story was how they saw the
opportunity of the MIT
Pan-Arab startup competition to get them into the US, with
$50,000 in prize money in their pockets and some good media
coverage.

(Right, after their win. Image via
Flat6labs)

So they put all of their efforts into ensuring
they won that competition.

At the same time they mapped out all the tech
blogs, tech media, and influencers in the developer world so if
they won the competition they could use it to gain early adopters,
fans, and traction.

They won, and got their first trip to Silicon
Valley (their target customer heartland), and they told all the
relevant media about their win and their product.

Locking down investors

At the same time they got an opportunity to
pitch to the Cairo Angels, their first real exposure to investors.
After the pitch there was excitement and skepticism in equal
amounts.

The skeptics argued that it was highly unlikely
that two kids from Egypt could build a tech product that would be
able to enter the US tech/developer market and compete or
win.

I was on the excitement side – I saw talent,
resilience, passion, and a possibility. So I volunteered to lead
the deal. It ended up being a long process, and in the middle it
turned from an equity investment to a convertible note (thankfully)
and Omar Gabr took the CEO role (which I thought showed amazing
maturity on the part of the founders).

The investment happened. Instabug now had the
money they needed to build a better product, hire better people,
and start marketing to the US developer market.

The players behind the success

So far Instabug was able to tap into networks,
funding, knowhow from the local ecosystem and, because of MITEF,
they were able to tap into the wider ecosystem in the diaspora Arab
tech/investment community in the US.

There were other ecosystem actors that Instabug
was able to exploit – MC Egypt for additional mentorship and
funding for a trip they needed to take. And all the time they were
using the media in regional events like Rise Up and Arabnet, and
the connections of mentors, and orgs, to get them
connected.

All of these touch points in the wider
ecosystem, and all of the connections they made, and fostered,
definitely played a role in their acceptance into Y Combinator, the
thermo-nuclear accelerator fund.

Let’s recap the ecosystem support for Instabug:
Flat6labs, MITEF, Cairo Angels, MEVP, MC Egypt, Rise Up, Wamda,
Tech Crunch, Arabnet, Black Box, Tech Wadi, Y Combinator, Accel:
these are connected organisations because ecosystem exists. Behind
these, and alongside these, are probably a hundred individuals
trying to help a startup with a crazy ambition to have the best
chance to do so.

Con Oâ€™Donnell founded digital media pioneer Sarmady Communications and, more recently, cofounded the annual entrepreneur event Rise Up Summit in Cairo. He's invested in a series of Egyptian startups, is a member of the Cairo Angels, and is a Flat6labs mentor.